A Hole in our Thinking

I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. - 1 Cor. 4:3,4


When my kids were young, but old enough to be left alone, we at times would come home to some great surprises, like a hole in the wall. As the interrogation process took place, asking who did this and how did it happen, often times there was no answer; silent solidarity. No one knew or saw anything, which meant that either we had a stranger hiding somewhere in the house, some poltergeist action going on, or one or more of our kids were lying. And we actually hoped it was the latter.

After the questioning (which brought no confession) there might be a sentiment sounding something like this, “God knows who did this” at which point you could feel the sigh of relief in each of the kids and I could almost hear them saying, “Good! As long as you don’t know, we really don’t care if God knows or not.” If we are being honest with ourselves we will admit that we too think this same way at times and the reality of what we feel and actually care of God is sobering.

Paul speaks of three judgments in this passage of 1 Corinthians: judgment by people, ourselves, and from God. He says that he doesn’t care what people think of him (which is usually the opposite for for us). He figures that if he is doing what is right then who cares what others think. He then says he doesn’t even judge himself and though his conscience is clear, that doesn’t mean he’s innocent. Let’s face it; we all tend to paint ourselves in the best light. We justify what we do so even though we may feel good about ourselves, that doesn’t make us innocent because of how skewed we are. He concludes with the most important judgment: God’s.

It is absolutely startling to me how the most important judgment has the least influence on our lives while the least important occupies our greatest concern. We care so much what others think and give such little regard to what God thinks.

What would our lives look like if we really cared more of what God thought than what people thought? What if we didn’t feel the need to justify our actions, but believed that should really be left up to God? I think the holes in our lives, like the hole in my wall, could be fixed a lot quicker.